As the Pressure on Trump Mounts, So Does the Turmoil in His Administration

The President has a history of making impulsive decisions when he wants to project an image of control.

Photograph by Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg / Getty

Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, would
like everyone to know that any mention of the “C” word in connection
with Donald Trump’s White House is mere anti-Trump propaganda. In an
interview with Fox News on Thursday, McDaniel, who is Mitt Romney’s
niece, said that many of the individuals who recently departed the Trump
Administration were business leaders who always said they would go to
Washington for a year to serve the country and then move on. Trump is “a
change agent,” McDaniel went on. “He likes new ideas in front of him.
There is no chaos in the White House, let me tell you.”

In McDaniel’s telling, the entire White-House-in-chaos narrative is
currently being pushed by Trump’s critics, because their other favored
narrative—the one that says that the Trump campaign colluded with
Russians during the 2016 campaign—has collapsed. The “collusion theory
has been debunked,” McDaniel insisted. “Now they are pushing the chaos
theory.” Citing her own recent visits to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, she
said that the White House is “a well-run machine” and “the President is
laser-focussed on the U.S. people.”

This was all most reassuring. It clearly explains why, in the past few
days, Trump has lost his senior economic adviser, Gary Cohn; fired his
Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, via Twitter; hired a conservative
television commentator, Larry Kudlow, of CNBC, to replace Cohn; hinted
at a further staff shakeup,
saying that he was “getting very close to having the Cabinet and other things
that I want”; and then criticized the stories that appeared heralding
such a shakeup, calling them “very exaggerated and false,” while
adding,
“There will always be change. I think you want to see change.”

The first reports of further personnel changes being imminent emerged on
Tuesday, just hours after Tillerson’s firing. “People close to the White
House say they expect more major personnel shifts this week. An effort
to rip off the bandaid fast on a number of fronts is likely,” Maggie
Haberman, a Times correspondent known for her excellent sources in the
Trump camp,
tweeted.
CNN’s Jim Acosta also weighed in on Twitter,
saying, “Hearing
more staff shakeups at WH this week not out of the question. ‘Winds of
change,’ a source close to WH says.”

Other stories ensued. Some of them said that Trump wants to replace
David Shulkin, the embattled Secretary of Veterans Affairs, with Rick
Perry, the Secretary of Energy, and also oust Ben Carson, the Secretary
of Housing and Urban Development. (Both Shulkin and Carson are embroiled
in scandals about the possible misuse of tax dollars.) On Wednesday, CBS
News’ Major Garrett
reported that the coming reshuffle could also take down H. R. McMaster, the
national-security adviser, and John Kelly, the White House chief of
staff, although Trump made a point of praising Kelly this week during a
trip to California.

Perhaps the most incendiary suggestion came via Vanity Fair’s Gabriel
Sherman, who
reported that Trump “discussed a plan to fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions.”
Sherman’s story went on: “According to two Republicans in regular
contact with the White House, there have been talks that Trump could
replace Sessions with E.P.A. Administrator Scott Pruitt, who would not
be recused from overseeing the Russia probe.” This report inevitably
sparked speculation that Trump could employ Pruitt to fire Robert
Mueller, the special counsel—speculation that is sure to increase with a
new Timesreport that Mueller’s team has subpoenaed business records from the Trump
Organization, including some related to Russia.

It should be noted that virtually all of these reports cite unnamed
sources, which makes it hard to assess their reliability. Certainly,
some in-the-know White House officials talk to the press on background.
But there is also, floating around Trump, a largish circle of cronies,
associates, and former aides, some of whom tend to exaggerate what they
know. And even if Trump himself were the source of these stories, they
wouldn’t necessarily be reliable. He often floats ideas, only to change
his mind, or get talked out of them. (Perhaps the most famous instance
came last summer, when Don McGahn, the White House counsel, reportedly
persuaded him to reverse an order to fire Mueller.)

About the only constants with Trump are impetuosity, a distant
relationship with the truth, and a pathological need to be at the center
of attention. Lately, these traits appear to have been accentuated. In a
tweet on Thursday afternoon, Haberman
wrote: “What
is point of predicting with him beyond an hour out? That’s the view his
own staff takes now.”

The spin from the White House is that the increased turnover, the
decision to meet with the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, and the
imposition of tariffs on steel and aluminum imports all reflect a
President who is finally getting on top of the job and asserting
himself. Much more persuasive is an interpretation offered by Jack
O’Donnell, a gaming-industry veteran who for years was the president of
Trump Plaza and Casino in Atlantic City. “When he’s under pressure is
when he tends to do this impulsive stuff,” O’Donnell told the Washington
Post earlier this week. “That’s what I saw in the business. When he
began to have pressure with debts, when the [Taj Mahal casino in
Atlantic City] was underperforming, is when he began acting very
erratically.”

As I’ve noted before, “Trumped!,” O’Donnell’s 1991 book about his time working at
the Plaza, provides an invaluable insight into how
Trump thinks and acts. In his interview with the Post, O’Donnell
pointed to the progress of the Mueller investigation and the scandal
surrounding his alleged affair with the porn actress Stormy Daniels as
factors increasing the pressure on Trump. “I think he likes the vision
of himself being in control,” he said. “I doubt he realizes the
consequences of North Korea, just like he didn’t realize the
consequences in business of walking in and firing someone at the Taj
without thinking about it. It’s Trump.”

In these circumstances, one can only pity the poor souls who are still
working for Trump at the White House. “This is the most toxic working
environment on the planet,” one of them
told the news site Axios. “Usually tough times bring people together. But
right now this atmosphere is ripping people apart. There’s no
leadership, no trust, no direction, and at this point there’s very little
hope. Would you want to go to work every day not knowing whether your
future career was going to be destroyed without explanation?”

There is no letup in the uncertainty or the media speculation about
further upheaval. At her daily briefing on Thursday, Sarah Huckabee
Sanders, the White House press secretary,
said,
“the President wants to make sure he has the right people in the right
places for the right time.” Meanwhile, the Washington Postreported that Pete Hegseth, a conservative spokesman for veterans’ groups who is
also a co-host of the weekend edition of “Fox & Friends,” one of Trump’s
favorite shows, was being lined up as a possible replacement for
Shulkin.